The not-a-chicken dance

PHOENIX — Robert Sarver once took a stand. Then, in his rookie season as the Suns’ owner in 2005, he acted like Mark Cuban’s better-dressed twin.

When Gregg Popovich held out Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili in a regular-season game in Phoenix, Sarver stood at mid-court and made a series of chicken-flapping gestures at Popovich. David Stern wasn’t happy, and Sarver later apologized to Popovich.

“I have to learn that during the heat of the game, you have to control your emotions,” Sarver said then. “Like with any business, there is a learning curve.”

So what he did this week goes against that image.

It also went against his business.

Some think Sarver did this, in part, for business. When he decided to put “Los Suns” on his players uniforms for tonight’s nationally-broadcast game, he also released a statement regarding Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law.

The second half of the statement read: “The frustration with the federal government’s failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona’s already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them.”

There are already threats of boycotts, from conventions to Major League Baseball moving the 2011 All-Star Game. And Arizona has gone through this before. The NFL once moved the Super Bowl after the state refused to honor the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

But that’s the broad business view. For Sarver, who paid a record price for the Suns and has struggled with over-sized payrolls ever since, there are few immediate gains. His franchise is up 1-0 on its hated rival, with the city thinking this could be the year that erases failures of the past, and Sarver has changed the discussion.

Sarver expressed that well, as did his onetime chicken-flapping target. “There needs to be a lot of work done, obviously,” Popovich said. “A lot of administrations have done nothing about the immigration deal, and now everybody is paying the price. That’s a bad thing, but the reaction is important, too. This reaction, I agree with Mr. Sarver, is inappropriate. It’s kind of like 9-11 comes, and all of a sudden there’s a Patriot Act, a knee-jerk sort of thing, and it changes our country and what we stand for. This law smacks of that. What he’s doing tomorrow night is very wise and very correct.”

Still, polls suggest a majority of Arizonans like this law. So by taking a side in a polarizing debate, Sarver went with his principles instead of his business. The safer route would have been to follow Michael Jordan’s thinking when he declined to publicly endorse a North Carolina senatorial candidate who was running against Jesse Helms.